Field Studies

Field studies conducted in several
states during the 1910s and 1920s were the first real empirical
investigations of adoption in the United States. They aimed to gather
basic statistical data on how
many and what types of adoptions were occurring, drawing primarily
on agency and court records. How many adoptions were there? At what
age were children adopted? By whom? Who arranged adoptions? Field
studies had two main purposes: to determine whether states’
regulatory requirements were adequate and to discover whether those
requirements were being followed or ignored. Field studies did not
contact families after adoption decrees were issued or follow up
on children later in life, as outcome
studies did. What they did was link child
welfare and the promise of safety in the adoption process to
policies promoting extensive regulation by professionals, agencies,
and courts.

Chronological
List of Field Studies

1921

U.S. Children's Bureau, Illegitimacy as
a Child-Welfare Problem, Part 2: A Study of Original Records
in the City of Boston and in the State of Massachusetts,
eds. Emma O. Lundberg and Katharine F. Lenroot, Dependent,
Defective, and Delinquent Classes Series No. 10, Bureau Publication
No. 75 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1921),
chap. 3.